Measuring Physical Violence in Male Same-Sex Relationships

Abstract

Previous research has not established whether standard violence measures are appropriate for assessing violence in same-sex relationships. This study, therefore, evaluated the structure of an expanded version of the physical violence scale of the Conflict Tactics Scales (CTS) in a sample of randomly selected gay and bisexual men. In total, 284 gay and bisexual men reported on perpetration and receipt of 14 violent acts in their same-sex relationships, both at any time in the past and during the past 12 months. Item response theory analyses indicated that the violence items were unidimensional for receipt ever in the past and for perpetration both ever in the past and in the past 12 months. The items were dispersed along the underlying violence continuum, from lower to higher severity of violence, and discriminated well in this range. We discuss implications for scoring the CTS.